Ani DiFranco - Reprieve Lyrics

Manhattan is an island
Like the women who are
Surrounded by children in a car
Surrounded by cars

Or Manhattan was a project
That projected the worst of mankind
First, one and then the other
Has made its mark on my mind

It's sixty years later
Near the hypo-center of the A-bomb
I'm in the middle of Hiroshima
Watching a twisted old Eucalyptus tree wave

One of the very few lives
That survived and lives on
Remembering the day it was suddenly
Thousands of degrees in the shade

And what all of nature gave birth to
Terror took in a blinding ray
With the kind of pain
It would take cancer so many years just to say

Oh, to grow up gagged and blindfolded
A man's world in your little girl's head
The voice of the great Mother drowned out
In the constant honking
Haunting the car crash up ahead

Oh, to grow up hypnotized
And then try to shake yourself awake
'cause you can sense what has been lost
'cause you can sense what is at stake

Yeah, so it took me a few years to catch on
That those days I catch everyone's eye
Correspond with those nights of the month
When the moon gleams like an egg in the sky

And men are using a sense
They don't even know they have
Just to watch me walk by
And me, I'm supposed to be sensible
Leave my animal outside to cry

But when all of nature conspires
To make me her glorious whore
It's 'cause in my body, I hold the secret recipe
Of precisely what life is for

And the patriarchy that looks to shame me for it
Is the same one making war
And I've said too much already
But I'll tell you something more

To split yourself in two
Is just the most radical thing you can do
So girl, if that shit ain't up to you
Then you simply are not free

'cause from the sunlight on my hair
To which eggs I grow to term
To the expression that I wear
All I really own is me

Yes, to split yourself in two
Is just the most radical thing you can do
Goddess forbid, that little atom
Should grow so jealous of Eve

And in the face of the great farce
Of the nuclear age
Feminism ain't about equality
It's about reprieve